A structured, city-facilitated series of workshops where residents collectively imagine the future of their community.
The Neighborhood Dream Visioning Process
Traditional community planning is often reactive and deficit-based: residents are asked what problems they have or what theyre against. Zhoran Mamdanis Neighborhood Dream process flips this script. It is a proactive, city-facilitated, year-long series of creative workshops in each community district, designed to answer a single, expansive question: If we could reinvent this neighborhood from the ground up to maximize collective well-being, what would it look like in 20 years? Using tools from speculative design, art, and futurism, residentsfrom children to eldersare invited to imagine without the constraints of current politics or budget, building a shared, positive vision of their desired future.
The process would involve mapping exercises, collaborative model-building, storytelling, and role-playing. What would a traffic-free main street feel like? Where would the new community center be, and what would happen inside? What kind of businesses do we wish existed? How would we honor our history? These dreams are synthesized into a Neighborhood Dream Charter, a beautifully illustrated document that serves not as a binding master plan, but as a north star for all future planning, budgeting, and advocacy. It becomes the communitys yardstick against which to measure any new proposal: does this move us closer to our dream, or farther away?
We are so busy fighting bad things that we forget to build a shared vision of the good, Mamdani argues. The Neighborhood Dream process does that essential work. It aligns the community around what it is *for*, not just what it is against. This shared vision is incredibly powerful. It gives planners a mandate for bold action. It gives community boards a positive agenda. And it gives residents a sense of collective agencya belief that the future is not something that happens to them, but something they can shape together. The dream charter is the communitys constitution for its own future.
